Happy Veterans Day, But…
“Idealism is what precedes experience, cynicism is what follows.”
-David Wolf
There has been a nagging at my spirit during what I am viewing as an unprecedented media run up to Veterans’ Day. I don’t have a particular gripe with Veterans Day, other than that they should just make it a Monday like all the other holidays, but that is just me being picky.
What I struggle with is the nature of the holiday. and its celebration.
At the risk of being particularly picky, Veterans Day isn’t about the military; It is about the service member.
Dragging your studio show overseas to use the military as a prop for your jingoism and let the military use you as a recruiting tool is all well and good( although it would be better if your parent company hadn’t been in bed with the administration in their reckless run up to a fraudulent war while totally ruining the one war that seemed to make sense, transforming it into a debacle that may be worse than the initial one, I see you NewsCorp) but is that REALLY paying tribute to the service members? REALLY?
It is about acknowledging the sacrifice being made by the service members. The Human beings that end up being converted into pawns and rooks in the chess match that plays out in the DoD.
Enough of the Military photo ops. I wanna meet the people whose lives have been made…and broken by their military experience. Because that’s what VETERANS Day should be about.
So, in that spirit. My Veterans Day message.
To those who spend the lions share of their adulthood sacrifing to a country that occasionally patronizes their efforts and appreciates them to the extent it advances their political agenda.
To Those who sacrifice everything for a nation that just might allow them to die for nothing.
A nation far more grateful than it will ever be man/woman enough to express thanks you.
GET YOUR MIND OFF MY PENIS: A Prelude
Allow me to paint a not so hypothetical scenario for you…
A middle aged white man decides to demonstrate that he is clearly in need of a significant level of professional help from a mental health specialist by Launching an gun attack on a group of women in a Pittsburgh Fitness center.
As fate would have it…We know why he did it because he was considerate enough to leave a note outlining his hatred for women.
Later…a blog of his was found in which he delves into some bizarre unhip dialect of ebonics where he decides to sentence white women to a lifetime of impalement and general abuse by Black Penises. He figured that since we had conquered the White House (thanks to the Liberal Media, of course) that we could be his useful idiots and screw white women the way he thinks Obama will screw the country.
Oh…you DON’T believe me?
*cues the horrible scratch of the record in my head*
Why?
What did my penis do to get inserted into this situation. Don’t Black men and their penises (Penii?) get enough drama for the issues they actually involve themselves in without Getting added in as accessories after the fact?
I was out in the streets for most of today, so I only heard snippets from the army of talking heads referencing racism and Obama.
Now, I am not exactly a mental health specialist, although I’ve been known to perpetrate one on Twitter.
Suffice to say whenever a straight white man fantasizes about white women being savaged sexually by Black men, it is bound to cause attention.
As the OWNER of a black penis…I confess that I am just a weeeeeeeee (Penile Punnishness alert) bit uncomfortable with the insertion (theres another one) of my penis into such a tragedy.
The unfortunate reality is that the mere presence of a Black Penis, no matter how incidental to the topic, can tilt the focus towards the penis. In this series, I will address some of my own suspicions and issues with black penises. (Penii?)
As I ponder the penis for way more time than I have any business doing…I would encourage you to post in the comments sections particular questions and comments for me to address.
More on this tomorrow.
15 Minutes on why Love conquers all
Part of the nature of being human is that that attracts those who have been pushed down and had their lunch money taken by love is that you realize how much of a bully love is.
Love knows you need it.
Love knows that despite your superhuman feats in your career, you are predisposed to love another person, whether family or stranger.
At the very moment you believe yourself incapable of taking another step down the road that leads to love, you see something that inspires you.
You hear THAT song
You smell THAT cologne
You see THAT movie
You go to THAT restaurant
The Nostalgia rolls through like the Tide
You want that feeling again…and no memory of the pain you used to feel will overcome those instantaneous moments where it all just clicked.
You say to yourself, no.
I’m tired of losing.
I’m tired of being used and abused
I don’t NEED love to be happy.
Maybe you don’t.
But you want it…you know you do.
Because THAT feeling is singular.
You can’t fake it.
You can’t simulate it in an avalanche of sex and debauchery.
You can’t bury it under your work.
That desire will never go away.
It is what it is.
You are who you are.
Stop fighting it. It’s as natural as breathing
Just be patient and don’t try to get love to be what it isn’t or do what it can’t.
15 minutes on What scares the crap out of me.
I am by my nature, a difficult person to scare. I am a father of three small to medium boys with a wife whos is as prone to shreiks of fear as she is feats of amazing mental and spiritual (and occasionally physical) strength.
As such, I dont let much shake me.
Except one thing.
The prospect of waking up at the Dawn of the Congressional Christmas break without National Health Care reform Scares the shit out of me.
But Why NOW? Health care in the US is the best in the world? (you. Shut up.)
Ok, maybe not the best but do you REALLY want the alternative?
The alternative to WHAT? ANOTHER decade of being shut out of the health care market because I have a job where I am largely paid by strangers?
Here is a secret, boys and girls…A deep, dark secret that I am taking this opportunity to share with all of you.
My youngest son has been diagnosed with sickle cell anemia. This is a fact that my wife and I knew was a very real possibility when we got married, so we didn’t really plan to have children. TFMI also had the sickle cell trait (as do Mrs. Ink and Me), so after rolling the dice successfully twice before…I wasn’t really interested in having more children, for 1000 reasons. Mrs. Ink just plain didn’t want kids.
But alack and alas, here we are. with a child who has a serious hereditary disease (how serious? The boy qualifies for Make-a-wish) and Faces a LIFETIME of medical challenges in order for him to lead a normal life.
TODAY, He is under my wife’s insurance, who as a school teacher for a large urban district in Texas, has PRETTY good insuance which is only affordable provided SHE is the only one on it.
The notion of me joining her on her insurance apparently is unpalatable to the good taxpayers of Texas, because that would send her monthly premium up 600%. Adding the boy only raised it 400%, what a bargain.
Here is the hook, My wife would like NOTHING better than to step out of the Classroom and retire to run our family business full time.
Fat effin chance of that happening until Health Care reform passes. So we wait. and watch. and pray.
Pray with us and for us, please.
Inkognegro Digs in the crates and comes up with a classic.
In case you find yourself reading this post and thinking…I’ve read this before; you have.
I wrote it for my previous blog.
Its just as true now as it was then.
Tuesday, May 02, 2006
The most unfortunate thing about the war between Black men and Black women is the fact that it rages on whether there are headlines to follow or not. As we speak some blogger somewhere is waxing eloquent as to how it is that the other sex just doesn’t get it, piling on anecdotes and embellishing and embracing stereotypes. Of course that is how adversity is. Well that is how it is supposed to be anyway. The moment brothers stop trying to rein in the SuperWomen they discover, turning them into Relics from an era gone by, will be the moment Women will stop feeling emasculated. Yes, brothers, if you stumble upon a multi-degreed head of household with her pedicured foot in corporate America’s ass, attempting to turn her into (yeah..i DARE you to find a Black woman who embodied the kind of character Donna Reed or June Cleaver represented on TV) is going to feel a lot like emasculation. and NO ONE, even a WOMAN, wants to be emasculated.
Let us be clear. The second half of the 20th century put the Black woman in an awkward position. It made HER the hunter gatherer, cause nurturing doesn’t put food on the table in enough quantity to keep up with the rapidly rising standard of living. Sacrifices were made, and the overall mindset of the black woman evolved as she started to embrace a role she….(deep breath) was not created to play.
Let me stop here and elaborate.
Men and Women are EQUAL…but they are not the same.
Equal does NOT mean the same.
IF you think it does, try slipping 2 rolls of quarters under a stripper’s G string instead of a 20 and see how far THAT gets you.
(yes i admit i drove this whole post JUST so I could type one of my favorite analogies. now back to my subject)
Women have become more like men than they were ever intended.
While many in my rapidly expanding circle have a tendency to eschew overt Scriptural references…allow me to be QUITE specific:
Ephesians 5: 22-33 Amplified version
22Wives, be subject (be submissive and adapt yourselves) to your own husbands as [a service] to the Lord.
23For the husband is head of the wife as Christ is the Head of the church, Himself the Savior of [His] body.
24As the church is subject to Christ, so let wives also be subject in everything to their husbands.
25Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her,
26So that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the Word,
27That He might present the church to Himself in glorious splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such things [that she might be holy and faultless].
28Even so husbands should love their wives as [being in a sense] their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself.
29For no man ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and carefully protects and cherishes it, as Christ does the church,
30Because we are members (parts) of His body.
31For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother and shall be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.
32This mystery is very great, but I speak concerning [the relation of] Christ and the church.
33However, let each man of you [without exception] love his wife as [being in a sense] his very own self; and let the wife see that she respects and reverences her husband [[a]that she notices him, regards him, honors him, prefers him, venerates, and esteems him; and [b]that she defers to him, praises him, and loves and admires him exceedingly]. [I Pet. 3:2.]
As you may or may not have read, I got married in May of 1997, at the not all that tender age of 26. The above scripture was not only read, but a sermonette was PREACHED on that passage DURING my wedding. (it should be noted that full fledged church was held on that day, a soul got saved, both the bride and the groom caught some semblence of the Spirit and it ran the wedding a full hour over schedule, which cost the groom a not all that nominal overtime fee for the limo. All that there, didnt sink in, obviously, because my dumbass was up to my elbows in a relative stranger not ONE year later.
You might ask why that was, and why I was able to live to tell the tale, especially considering the fact that my then-wife was 2+ months pregnant with our first child. Youll have to trust me that I had my reasons and that I was spared for good cause. I am only pointing this factoid out to let you know that I am NOT without sin.
That I am MUCH, MUCH, MUCH, better at deciphering YOUR problems and how you should HANDLE YOUR BI than I am at regulating what happens in these here parts.
I KNEW what was expected of me. I DID not know what I was getting myself into.
- I did not know that somehow Married men are more attractive than single men.
- I did not suspect that some people in the world think NOTHING of bedding someone else’s spouse.
- I thought I was bigger than my desire to touch and be touched by a woman.(I may be NOW…i damn sure wasn’t then…and I probably still am not.)
- I underestimated the ability of a woman (one woman in particular) to hold a grudge.
- I completely misunderstood the enduring, never ending damage of infidelity. Infidelity is SOOOO BAD, that women you DIDNT cheat on will look at you askance when you tell them you had a one night stand almost 8 years ago with a woman you no longer converse with while you were married.
I am of the overall opininon that 90% of premarital counseling classes are a joke.
Think about it, You spend your entire relationship trying to avoid the very issues that could probably lead to the death of your relationship, when those are the VERY issues you need to approach head on. Once you do that, how can you proceed on some kind of schedule, knowing that around every corner is a discovery about each other that will challenge everything you know about that person.
Marriage is a wonderful and powerful institution. It is older than Communion and baptism and the very bedrock to culture as we know it. Getting it right is the difference between one nation under a groove and one nation under God, Indivisible with liberty and justice for all.
Three the Hard Way: High InFidelity Pt 1
Previously on Three The Hard Way
In the process of trying to get to the core of my status as a father of three, I have not done my proper due diligence in painting a proper picture of just HOW my first marriage ended up an exercise in putting on appearances and thinly veiled contempt.
The Long answer is incompatibility and an inability to work together and grow together. But me and experience has proven that answer flatly insufficient.
95% of the stumbles I experienced in BOTH of my marriages could have been easily remedied with some honest and frank conversation and introspection on all parts.
Even though through the magic of 20/10 hindsight we would NEVER have progressed beyond casual dating partner and have both matured and moved on to successful marriages, I am confident that we would have scrapped at it and ground out an ugly win. But that other 5% kept getting in the way.
NOTHING will wreck a marriage like infidelity.
Even the most emotionless single episodic infidelity in the worst Marriage is the metaphorical equivalent of throwing your child out of a burning three story building when there is a kiddie pool full of alcohol garnished with shards of plate glass directly beneath you.
Sure you See it…but that doesnt mean you can avoid it.
The fall may not kill you, instantly. But 99% of the time you will wish it did. The aftermath is FAR worse than any Death your child(relationship) might come upon.
I have done that.
More than once.
I’ve never hit the pool directly.
OHHHH but I have been close.
Close enough for the Baby/relationship to be too injured to live a full life.
Once I even Killed it.
You can only throw the same baby out the window so many times before the baby’s body just gives up.
Infidelity is something that can happen to ANYONE. Your House (life) catches fire…and your impulse comes to grab that Baby (your relationship) and toss it out to safety.
Who wants to have their baby burn up in the house? No one, right?
Then work on putting the fire out…instead of throwing the baby out of the window like a suitcase.
(The ink says this Metaphor needs more flushing out….Part II REAL soon.)
Three the Hard Way – Inkognegro 3.1: The Momma’s Boy
Author’s Note: forgive the tardiness, Labor, newborn babies, custodial parenting, stuff like that intruded and I ended up spending more time Living the story than writing about it. My bad. You won’t miss a detail, I promise.
Previously on Three The Hard Way
In the aftermath of 9/11, there was enough flux in my life that I could pretend my family life was back to normal. I trudged through The fall of 2001 with my head down, saying very little verbally, but tackling my new found passion of writing. Writing at that time was like the therapy that I had never experienced.
I was participating on an anonymous group blog called Kindred with a bunch of established Bloggers. The rush I felt as a part of that immensely talented collective inspired me to creative heights I have NOT found since. I was BLOGGING with the Best Black Bloggers in the world way back in TWO THOUSAND ONE, SON!
I spent the autumn oblivious to my family, Engaging just enough to keep everyone quiet about the turmoil of the past and to focus on how I was going to survive eighteen years of Loveless marriage while raising my sons. Suffice it to say that it never occured to me that they might NOTICE that mommy and daddy didn’t really like each other all that much. That 3.0 ALREADY could tell that something wasn’t quite right even as he was concentrating on the wonders of Potty Training.
That 3.1 was a momma’s boy was inevitable. That he resembled TFMI was merely coincidence. For someone who spent the last 4 months in the womb of a woman whose husband only occasionally shielded his hopeless outlook on marital bliss and family, it is difficult to imagine that I could have built up a great deal of cool points in utero.
But none of that stopped me. I was a man who only vaguely remembered having a Father in the house. I told ANYONE who would listen to my digital rantings, that i Would NEVER be THAT father. Id Stick in through thick and thin. Wasn’t gonna make it until death did us part, but I would DEFINITELY make Graduation.
Famous Last words.
Three the Hard Way: 9/11 didn’t change EVERYthing (interlude)
After reading the Interlude, you can get a sense of the cauldron of conflict that 3.1 was conceived and nurtured in. The picture looked fine, but story behind the picture was Toxic.
(This is why the thousand words a picture tells is never enough)
The physical picture maintained a sheen suitable for framing, but the reality was infecting all those involved.
By Labor Day weekend, the situation had devolved into a war-of-the-roses type thing where folk had retreated into their respective foxholes and the boy wandered back and forth between us like some special envoy in the safe zone. I had clearly moved on, I just hadn’t moved out. To say it was ugly engages in a form of understatement that I am personally uncomfortable
As with the country, the events of 9/11 changed everything. On the surface that is.
While I am confident EVERYONE has a “where were you on 9/11 story” those of us who could see the smoke in the air and engaged in the cinematic exodus out of lower manhattan and Inner Washington, DC have our own peculiar stories. The day brought me face to face with how fleeting life can be, how easily angry spouses can be transformed to grieving widows. For the first time in months, we sat as a family and bonded over the tragedy and how our family had been spared. All was well.
For a week.
After that, you may have well said that the Terrorists had won in my house, because it was business as usual at my house
Three the Hard Way: Can’t We all Just Get Along? (Interlude)
There was a certain resignation to my life in April, 2001. To the outside world, the three of us were the ideal small family. We screamed out for a patronizing commercial extoling the wonders Wal-Mart could do for young Black Families. I was married but realized that it was going nowhere fast. As in most marriages, it had become a monster that two people each put a great deal of effort into constructing, but as is always the case, the history books will write that it was all my fault. We were great parents, but not very good spouses and I could see the end up ahead, even though I dreaded the effect it would have on Inkgnegro 3.0 who was the sole propelling force in my life. Rest assured, no piece of paper would have kept us together had he not been born.
I remember the fight clearly.
Her: Blah blah blah
Me: Blah blah blah (under my breath) With your dumb ass.
Her: *Leaps across the room and punches me in the jaw…hard*
Me: *takes punch: throws her on the bed to prevent more punches*
*large cat exits in a rush*
*small boy enters yelling and screaming*
*Her and Me realize that we have NO business carrying on like this, both stand up and glare like we were caught with our hands in the proverbial cookie jar*
It was at that moment that we calmed the hysterical boy and finished the argument in a less physical manner.
At that precise moment, as I drove to work on the night before Easter, I was done. All the arguments we had hidden from the boy were exposed in the most ugly format possible. He was 2 1/2, and I have been meaning to ask if he remembers it.
It was April 15, 2001 when TFMI told me that if I was going to go, I needed to go now and not keep her in suspense. I was on my way to work, literally. I stopped long enough to grab another tie, and a pair of boxers and I left. I left the money from my check in the account, opened up a new acct with the money I made from the second job and moved on in every way possible. By Friday I had a new place, and by May 1, life was starting to make sense for me.
It was the Friday before Mother’s day when I came by to drop off her Mother’s day gift from 3.0 and realized that TFMI wasn’t herself. Upon great interrogation, it was revealed that she was pregnant.
Just like that; I realized that Life wasn’t going to work with me around the corner living the “single” life like Cameo. On Mother’s Day night I moved back into the apartment and did my best to resurrect the monster I had slain with one quick decision. I succeeded to the extent that the Monster became a Zombie that would have made Romero proud.
Marriage the blessed sacrament had become Marriage the job. and I wanted to take that Job and shove it. It was in this atmosphere that Inkognegro 3.1 was nurtured and grew in utero.
Three The Hard Way: Inkognegro 3.0 (The Clone)
All fathers have that moment where we look at our flesh and blood, our progeny, our namesakes, the Fruit of our proverbial loins and realize that we are saying EXACTLY what someone said to us and that they are the living embodiment of that longstanding unarguable curse of childhood:
We ultimately raise the very children we were.
When I met TFMI (The Former Mrs. Inkognegro) on our first date, I told her outright that there was one thing I was completely unwilling to compromise on. My first born son WOULD carry on my name. As a Junior myself, it was a non-negotiable condition of our relationship.
On October 14, 1998, as a result of the most smooth labor episode in the anecdotal history of Holy Cross Hospital (Labor began at 5:15am, water broke at 7:45am checked in the Pital at 9:22am, Time of Birth: 9:37am, all natural, no cuts)
It was almost as though I spit him out.
I vowed I would never leave him like my father did me. He was too much like me to have to go through life by himself. I knew his mother wouldn’t understand him. She didn’t understand ME…and I was GROWN. She loves him like her first born, because he is. But the same things about ME that made her crazy (and rightfully so) REEEEEALLY make her crazy when he does it.
But of course…Those who do not learn from their history are condemned to repeat it. I was already doomed; on the path to repeat the same mistakes my father made 27 yrs before:
- Find yourself parlaying your job into a plethora of unfulfilling relationships
- Realize that you actually want more than that
- Decide you want to settle down
- Meet, woo, court and marry the next woman you meet.
- Decide you don’t children right away and then IMMEDIATELY procreate
- suddenly find yourself married and parenting with someone who loves you, but doesn’t like the person you really are
- sabotage the marriage in an effort to chase down your own journey of self-discovery at the expense of growing your marriage.
So, Three years later, just on the heels of potty training and just after the birth of his little brother. Daddy left. Didn’t go far, but gone all the same.
My father didn’t go FAR. At first. First it was across town. then a few states away….then cross country. Chasing something. Anything. finding nothing but Distance and regret.
I did benefit from growing through those years with my father. I see 3.0 often enough to stay reminding him that Daddy knows what he’s going through. Sure as I sit here, I know what they future can hold for him. Good and bad. All about the choices. And not just the ones that HE makes, but the ones that I make too.
My father died when he was 51. I was the only child he had. Seven Wives. One child.
I was 29 when he passed away of an aneurysm on the side of the road in Southern California, his home for 20 years. I had spent 1992 and 93 with him…as his roommate and assistant. I believe it was one of his NON-wives that ultimately sabotaged our relationship at the time. This apparently was why she was a NON-wife. Ironically enough, my father told me (two wives later) that my presence could have MADE her a wife. Her jealousy of my presence made her a non-non wife.
My Uncle (on dad’s side) came to MD and flew with me to LA to Bury my father. It was the last time I ever saw my uncle. The last time I saw anyone on my father’s side. During that week I heard more about my father in death than I did when he was alive.
It was at THAT time that I started to put the pieces together of who my father was.
It was at THAT time that I realized the path I was on.
I vowed that I would NOT let my sons learn about me from strangers at my funeral.
Everyday that I wake up I get a chance to teach my sons more about me.
3.0 is ten now. His personality is taking shape. the shape of MY personality…good and bad.
This summer will be the most time we have spent together since I left in the still of a February Night, told by TFMI that she didn’t want him to wait until the boys grew up, that he should leave right now. She later said she didn’t REALLY mean it; that she was just mad.
I found out later that my mother said the same thing to my father. The night HE left.
My mission in life in regards to Mr. 3.0 is to prevent him from Following in ALL of my footsteps. Cause if I do nothing. He will.
Hell, if I do MANY things….he still might. But it won’t be my fault.
You have now met Inkognegro 3.0. Kinda.
